THE $800m OIL SCANDAL
The Tūī oil field was, as they say in the petroleum industry, a gusher. The first few months of production, in 2007, paid for the entire development costs of US$269 million.
Located 50km off the Taranaki coast, it was at one point New Zealand’s largest oil producer. In its first decade, its owners sucked out US$3 billion worth of the black stuff before offloading the whole operation to Tamarind Resources, of Malaysia.
Tamarind knew it was taking a gamble with such a mature field. But it was also convinced it had bought far more than just some ageing subsea infrastructure. It made all kinds of lofty promises about its plans, but only a few months into a $300m off shore drilling campaign, it quit.
As a result, the company has left behind debts of nearly half a billion dollars, including money owed to many small firms in Taranaki. And the Government has been left to pick up the estimated $349m bill to shut it all down and clean up the mess.
The floating tanker used to process oil from the field has already been removed. But there is still much to do, including plugging eight wells drilled into the seabed and removing all the pipelines and other infrastructure. Work began last summer and will probably take two more summers to complete.
“When they drilled the workover well, they found nothing, and they were reliant on finding
